Orange votes for Big Brother sponsorship

It's a phone-in vote on phone-in voting

There's been a lot of controversy about dubious premium rate phone-ins connected to TV shows this week, but that hasn't stopped Orange setting up a telephone vote for staff to decide whether or not it should sponsor the mother and father of all telephone voting shows - Big Brother.

We were tipped off via premium rate email by a L'Orange insider.

CarphoneWarehouse suspended its sponsorship following the racism row which hit the most recent Celebrity Big Brother. It announced earlier this week that it was canning the deal altogether.

But today Orange staff are being invited to decide if it should step in to replace the evicted sponsor.

Orange said in a statement: "We're looking into whether Big Brother is an appropriate programme for us to sponsor. In fact, we've asked our 12,000 employees for their opinion. We're waiting to see what comes back from them and then we'll make a decision."

The TV show will be keen to ensure it gets its phonelines sorted out before broadcast - shows can bring in anything between four million and 20 million votes a week, with each vote costing about 50 pence. ®